


Eye of the Storm

by Aelfay



Series: Levels!verse [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dom John Watson, Dom/sub, God I love lestrade so much okay, Healthy Relationships, Levels!verse, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Paternal Lestrade, Sub Sherlock Holmes, learning about love and stuff, relationship dynamics, relationships are about mutual love, this is so soppy it hurts my soul, vulnerability is strength sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 05:26:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11822142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelfay/pseuds/Aelfay
Summary: Sherlock begins to learn that it's not all one-sided.





	Eye of the Storm

When Sherlock gets a call about a case, not long after the first night with John, he's thrilled about it. He's ready to grab his coat and go, but then stops short and freezes, suddenly terrified. He's kept his nature hidden for so long, and now -- now he's vulnerable. Now someone knows, and John could show everyone how weak Sherlock really is, and before he realises it he's shaking, gripping the phone so tight his knuckles are white. The Work has been his life for so long now. His heart feels like it's pounding in his throat, and when John asks him what the case is, he turns toward the window silently, looking out on London. He supposes he looks his normal self, moody and vague, but then John comes to his side and puts a hand on his arm, and he realises he's still shaking.

John takes the hand away, having got his attention, and says, "Sherlock." Sherlock has already flinched, waiting to feel his mind go fuzzy and his knees go weak, but they don't, and he frowns. Pauses. John isn't domming him. 

Sherlock turns, and John's face is open, a little patient, eyes gentle but sparkling at the edges, and he's still not using his dominance, it's contained, wrapped up in a jumper. Sherlock swallows. 

"Case," John says, and bounces once to his toes and then back down to his heels. Sherlock's hands stop shaking, and his shoulders lose their tense set, and John asks, "Where?" 

"Chalk Farm," Sherlock says, and his voice comes out clear, because his head is clear, and he adds, "Stabbing."

"Bit run of the mill," John says, but he's turned away to get his coat already. Something drops out of the bottom of Sherlock's stomach, and something in his chest takes flight. Sherlock loves him. He wants to sink to his knees, but for a different reason now, not because he has to, but because John is perfect, every compact inch of him designed to fit with Sherlock like a puzzle piece. "Why does Lestrade want you?"

"They think he stabbed him with a chisel, but they can't find the chisel, there's no construction works nearby, and he's upside down in a garbage chute," Sherlock says, still standing by the window, holding his phone. John turns around to look at him, shrugging on his coat perfectly normally, like Sherlock hasn't suddenly felt his heart fly out of his chest and into John's. 

"We're going, aren't we?" he asks, pausing when he sees that Sherlock hasn't moved, and Sherlock blinks. 

"Yes, right, course, yes, we are," he says, and puts away his phone, coming to grab his coat and his shoes, pulling them on quickly as John runs down the stairs to hail a cab. Sherlock pauses for half a moment before he closes the door, needs a deep breath to pull on the armour of the detective before leaving Baker Street, and then he shuts it and leaves.   
  
The cab ride is  _lovely._ Sherlock wonders at how he hasn't recognised it before. It's exactly like any other cab ride they've ever had, and he's suddenly so grateful for every moment of it, for the way that John never seems to press, never asks him to reveal more than he wants until it's time. Sherlock's aware now that John could always have gotten his own way, always, ever since the beginning, and he never has. He's never used his strength to manipulate Sherlock into being something else. Sherlock's suddenly ashamed of thinking that John might do it now. John's better than that.

 

* * *

They get out at the murder scene. Lestrade is affably confused, as usual, and Sherlock considers him for a long moment, long enough to make Lestrade shift back and ask, "everything all right?" once everyone else is out of earshot and John's turned away to look at the body.  
  
"You're police," Sherlock says, slowly. "Is that why you don't just dom people into telling you things? It's against court rules or something?"  
  
Lestrade blinks twice at him, and then clears his throat and scratches the back of his head. "Ah, naw, not really," he says, going pink, and Sherlock scrambles to understand. "I mean, yeah, it's against the law, can't have a dommed witness testify, but it's -- well, it's a bit awful, isn't it? Using someone's, I dunno, vulnerability to get what you want?"  
  
"I thought that was the point of domming," Sherlock says impatiently, and Lestrade's eyes flicker to John, to Sherlock's surprise.

"He treating you okay?" Lestrade asks, and now he sounds  _worried_ , and Sherlock realises that Lestrade thinks _John_  is the one who made him think about domming this way, and Sherlock gives an impatient huff.

"As usual, you're flailing in the dark. Of  _course_  he's treating me  _okay_. That's why I'm  _asking_ ," he says, piqued, and Lestrade's face does something complex, something that makes Sherlock feel like a child at his dad's knee. He gets that feeling a lot around Lestrade, and it's odd; he should resent feeling like a child, but on the other hand, Lestrade's never used it against him, not even when he was throwing up on his sofa during detox. 

"Right. Er, right. No, domming isn't about getting what you want. It's about-" Lestrade pauses, takes a moment. "Care. Mutual care. Yeah, domming generally means the other person does what you like, but personally, if the other person isn't getting what they need too, it's not worth it. It feels rotten."

Sherlock considers this. "And yet plenty of doms don't seem to agree with you," he says, and Lestrade's brown eyes, normally so warm, go a quiet sort of sad around the corners.   
  
"Naw, I guess they don't, or I wouldn't have a job. Still, it's not something I'd ever want to do. If I... want something... even a testimony, I'd rather get it honestly," he said frankly, but his voice has a sad resignation to it. "I sometimes wonder if it's easier for the lower-level ones. Not the really-low level; that must be miserable, having anyone able to push you around." Sherlock feels his chest go tight -- he agrees, but he doesn't want to be  _pitied_. Lestrade doesn't know, of course, and continues. "But, I dunno. I talked to a couple others about it, once. Apparently, they can dom and it doesn't feel like floating."

"Floating?" Sherlock asks, intrigued, but then John is coming up.   
  
"Dead about a day, I'd say; he's starting to smell," he says with a grimace, and Sherlock  _adores_  that face, wants to kiss his nose, for some absurd reason. Really, it's like now that he's allowed to touch John he's unable to stop the urge to continue touching John. For a moment he considers how Mycroft would feel if Sherlock confessed his new addiction, and has an illicit thrill of glee at the idea, but then he's pulling his coat closer around him and heading forward to investigate for himself.   
  
John and Sherlock get home about two hours later. Sherlock has fallen down a garbage chute into a pile of truly nasty rubbish, and is sulking about his coat being filthy as a result. John is grinning. 

"Go take a shower," he says, but the words are free of any actual  _order_. "I'll see about soaking that coat until the cleaner can pick it up."  
  
"You can't soak wool, John!" Sherlock protests, but John rolls his eyes. 

"Of course you can, you just can't scrub it. It's the friction that makes it felt," he says and takes the coat off Sherlock's shoulders, and Sherlock finds that he actually trusts John with it, which is bizarre. It was the first thing he bought after his first case, and he's very protective of it, but he lets John take it to soak and heads for the shower. God, he reeks. 

When he's scrubbed pink and his curls are flopping wetly, dripping water down his nape, he dries and wraps the towel around his waist, coming out to ask his questions. He doesn't really think twice about what he's wearing until John looks up and his eyes dilate. John clears his throat twice. "Er, Sherlock-"  
  
"Lestrade said that it feels like floating," Sherlock blurts out, and his thumb squeezes where the towel is tucked in around his waist.   
  
John blinks at the non-sequitur. "Floating," he says, and Sherlock swallows and nods. 

"He said domming felt like floating," he says, and then asks, "Does it?"

John's eyebrows do a lovely thing where they get a crease right between, and Sherlock wants to press his thumb right there to feel it but resists. 

"I wouldn't call it floating. I'd call it focus," he finally says. "It's like one of those camera zooms. I can focus on one thing, and only that thing, and everything else goes fuzzy."

Sherlock pictures a fine-focus camera, and shivers; the idea of being the one clear thing in John's entire world is heady. Goose-pimples begin to rise on his bare chest, and he blames it on the water still dripping down his body. 

"Lestrade seemed to feel like it was-" he begins, and then realises he has no way to finish that sentence. It wasn't something Lestrade had stated, just an attitude: his general reluctance to dom without consent, the strange sort of vulnerability he seemed to have around the entire subject. Despite Sherlock's lack of words, John seems to understand.   
  
"Yeah, it's a bit freaky," he says, easily, and Sherlock almost winces, but then John stands, passing him. Sherlock's confused for a moment but then feels a clean tea-towel begin to stroke against his curls. John knows he's sensitive there, and it's remarkably gentle as he dries them off, stops the steady drip-drip-drip against his skin. "Domming is far less vulnerable than being on the receiving end, but it doesn't  _feel_  any less like opening your soul. I hadn't done it since Afghanistan, you know; the club was the first time in ages."

Sherlock blinked and turned around. "Why did you-"

"Because you asked me to," John answers the half-spoken question with a little smile twitching at the corners of his lips and his eyes. Sherlock really, genuinely can't help it this time when he leans in to kiss the little wrinkles at the corner of John's left eye, and he feels them get a little deeper against his lips -- John's smiling  _more_ , and that's one of the most wonderful things he's ever felt, John smiling at the touch of Sherlock's lips. John's steady hand touches the edge of the towel, just a small pressure at Sherlock's hip, and Sherlock pulls back a little to look down at John's face again. John's tongue flicks against his upper lip, leaving a little shining spot there as he says, voice frank, "I didn't want to feel vulnerable, feel like I could be attacked by anything out-of-focus, so I didn't, until then."

Sherlock pictures it again; the view of a fine-focus camera, a honeybee perfectly in view of the sight, and then a pouncing lion coming from the blurred background. He shudders. Oh. Yes, perhaps John's PTSD wouldn't quite enjoy that risk.   
  
"But you did, John, you took the entire club-" he says and breaks off at John's little smile.   
  
"I did, and then just as I was beginning to worry about  _what the hell I was doing_ , I saw you on your knees." John's smile somehow brightens, and Sherlock goes pink, all the way down to his navel. "I felt steady again pretty quickly."   
  
Sherlock's breath feels tight, and he knows he's the colour of Lake Hillier and should probably be embarrassed about it, but it's -- "The eye of the storm," he says, and John blinks and goes back to drying his curls. 

"Hm?" he asks, and Sherlock leans into the touch as he tries to explain.   
  
"You're a typhoon. I saw it, you know, from the very first day in the lab; you have a storm and you hide it in soft clothes and quiet words, but I saw. And when you dommed, in the club, the storm-" Sherlock makes a "whoosh" noise and flings apart his hands, and John's face opens in understanding. He grins once and nods, a quick decisive movement that Sherlock would have missed if he'd blinked. 

"Yes, Sherlock. You're the eye of my storm," he says, and Sherlock  _glows_ , because that's the loveliest thing anyone's ever called him, ever, in all of his years of living, and he has to close his eyes to put the moment in his mind palace, on a pedestal in the foyer so he sees it every time he comes in. John's saying something, though, so he has to come back. 

"Pardon?" he asks, and John chuckles, repeating himself. 

"Bed?" he asks, and Sherlock flushes, and nods, shifting, and John reassures him. "Just sleep," he promises, and Sherlock relaxes. 

"Thank you," he says softly, and he doesn't just mean for this moment, and John knows it. 

"You're welcome," is his simple answer, and they head to bed, hand in hand. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've not named this series after a Siken poem. I'm kind of sorry to break the streak, but this had to be named the way it is.


End file.
